Planted By God to Display His Glory -Isaiah 61:3

Posts tagged ‘Purpose’

And they lived at my house. Not out in the country, where chickens cluck and peck and roam free to do chicken-y type things, at MY HOUSE. My two-story 1970’s style middle suburbia house. With two dogs, a minivan in the driveway, and our family with 1.0 child.

A 1.0 child who had a dream to raise chickens. In the middle of a town of 165,000. Did I mention at MY HOUSE?? Oh yeah, I did.

Needless to say it was a shocker, but in reality not so much. Because she started young collecting worms (I had to stifle my “ewww’s”), bugs (more “ewww’s”), and later managed to talk us into owning guinea pigs (one HE ended up being a SHE, and another ONE unexpectedly became TWO). She also begged to have a gecko and to babysit the reptiles from the school science lab over the summer (sorry kid, reptiles are worse than “ewww” to me).

Ah, but chickens. What do you do when your 1.0 only child begs you to have chickens? And you live in a bizarre square block of town that is zoned “rural estate?” Where chickens are legal, even though the mall is two blocks away and there’s a 7-11 on the corner. And furthermore, your kid knows it’s legal because the neighbors across the street have chickens. AND she thinks they’re cute.

We said we’d think about it. That’s the parent way of saying “no,” when you don’t want to crush your kid’s heart so you pretend you’re going to talk about it later. A week went by and we blissfully thought the chicken dream was just going to fade away.

Yeah, right. The kid was quiet because she had hatched a plan (pun intended).

As we returned from an afternoon shopping trip she ambushed my husband and I at the door. In high-heeled black sandals, dressy black pants, and a long black jacket over a white shirt. Oh, and her hair in an up-do and make-up on. In her most professional business woman voice and posture she gestured to us to “please step into my office, I have something to show you.”

Oh man, why do kids have to be so darn cute? Even though she was sixteen, we couldn’t resist her charms any more than we could when she was two. She had us, and she knew it.

As we were ushered into “her” office (my husband’s) she sat us on the couch and graciously offered us the drinks and snacks she had made. My husband and I exchanged an eye rolling we-know-we-are-in-for-it now glance as she began her presentation—in Power Point. With animation. Pictures. Charts. Sound effects. Oh my!

It was an epic “I Have a Dream of Owning Chickens” presentation. She promised to feed, clean, care for, and otherwise be “mama” if only we would let her have three chickens. She said how great it would be to give her an opportunity to show how responsible she could be (music to a parent’s ears). She gave us all the research information and even a cost breakdown.

You guessed it, a few days later three fluffy gray chicks came to live in a cardboard box in our garage. She petted them, held them in her hands and nestled them in her lap. Sat for hours in the garage watching them before she could name them based on their personalities:

Roxie—the cuddly calm one who loved to be petted the most.

Bobbles—who kept falling asleep on top of the food dish in the middle of eating…and performed other silly antics.

Pistachio—nutty, more unpredictable, and always wanting to be noticed.

Our farm friends laughed at our “pet” city chickens who followed their “mama” wherever she went, and loved to sit in her lap and be petted long after they had moved into the coop and started doing stuff real chickens do.

Child 1.0’s dream had been realized. Things didn’t turn out exactly like the presentation promised, but living with chickens helped change my perspective about chickens.

And about going after your dreams.

You see, I came to like them. Even enjoy them. They did have personalities, and they were happy little chickens. Living in a happy place where they were well fed and cared for. Did I mention they would stay in the entryway in a dog crate on cold winter’s nights? Yup, very well cared for.

I never had a dream to own chickens. Never ever. But as a parent I held the power of the life and death of my daughter’s dream in my hands. I knew it and my husband knew it. “No” was our plan, and she knew that. She determined not to take “no” for an answer.

She believed she could convince us if she demonstrated that she was ready, able and committed to the chicken dream. (And she knew the Business garb-PowerPoint-Let Me Feed You marketing plan would work!)

Do I do the same with my dreams? Do I believe and demonstrate when I need to convince somebody that I’m ready, able and committed to my dream?

Nope.

Epic dreams wither and die with the changing seasons of my life and I’ve wondered why. And now that I’m old(er) I’ve started to believe it’s too late anyway. I’m obsolete, out of date…too “retro,” like my 70’s house, to be relevant.

But God says to me, “it’s not over till it’s over.” And I think, “Well, yes Lord, I suppose I’m not dead yet!”

And God says, “Remember the chickens. They filled an empty joy spot you didn’t even know that you had.”

“Time to get yourself all dressed up girl, arm yourself with what you know is true, and don’t BE a chicken! Because there are empty joy spots in other people’s lives to be filled. And they don’t know they need chickens (meaning YOU) either.”

(Okay, I get the message Lord, just please help me find the right outfit of courage to wear!)

Let me tell you friend, owning chickens was an impossible dream. God-sized dreams always are. You have them and I have them, and too often we take “no” for an answer.

So here’s the deal. We need to encourage one another, and stop with the “I’m not good enough’s,” the “She’s better than me’s,” the “Why me’s?,” and the “Nobody will listen to me’s,” and just try. Try going after the dream until it happens.

I will if you will.

Yes, you can call me chicken! 🙂

~Linda

Hey Jessie–this one’s for you! 🙂

And thanks kid 1.0, for the lesson in going after your dreams. You rock my world!

Like this:

Words, in caffeinated-like frenzy, somersault down the slide from brain to keyboard-glued fingertips.

I scribble notes as I take my shower.

Thankfully, the ink doesn’t run.

I stop the hairdryer to capture a few more as they whizz by in reckless abandon.

I arrange and rearrange them. More shout to get out and join the happy flood.

Five hours pass.

I forget to eat.

I’ve been away somewhere, yet right here all day.

I’ve felt fear, sadness, and despair.

My teeth have clenched.

My shoulders tensed.

My stomach knotted.

Later they release.

Joy, hope, and love return in a welcome relief.

Something has changed in me today. The spring of words that was tapped into is like no other spring I’ve ever known.

I didn’t even WANT to write today.

I wanted a lazy home alone day. I wanted to plant flowers. Take a nap. Read a book.

But I thought I would take a passing look at the chapter I finished on Monday first. The one in the book I’m writing…and endeavoring to live.

I fixed a phrase. Revised an awkward transition, added a new paragraph…

A paragraph that was hard to write. One that cost me. Cost me my pride, my writer’s pretense, and my avoidance of the real me.

Because it was me. Using words to share about me. Telling truths I never wanted to tell.

And then suddenly the words would not stop. Out of control, yet perfectly controlled by a deeper part of my writer self.

One I have never met before today.

Because I am a reluctant spokesperson for God. More afraid that my weaknesses will fail Him, than I am confident that He can do what He says He will do.

A Moses-like writer, a stuttering failure, who carries a pen as a staff in her hand. And God says,

“Throw it down”

Then

“Pick it back up and write.And I will set my people free.”

I dare not believe it. I can only obey.

Yet I know I am different. God’s taken more control, freed me more from self…to be myself.

And I know…I am no longer a wanna-be.

I am.

A writer. A fool for Christ.

My words have been set free.

But not to teach.

TO HEAL.

Because healing words are not from the head. They bleed from the heart…to transfuse God’s love to a broken world.

I pray my future readers will see the drops of blood I shed on the pages of that book today. I pray God will use them to heal, even as I’ve been healed in the writing of them.

And now I pause in my writing to wonder, have you been a wanna-be too? Can you hear God asking you to throw down what you hold so tightly in your hand? The very thing He has spoken to you that He can use to set his people free?

Will you stay a wanna-be, or will you BE?

Yes, that is the question.

I bet you didn’t want God to ask you that question today, anymore than I did.

But He did. Because it’s time my friend,

to:

…bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,

to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—

to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

Like this:

I met a few amazing women this week. None of them in person. One of them not even alive.

A writer, a singer, and an evangelist, all introduced to me by words.

Written words.

Jesus-changed-my-life words.

I’d like to introduce them to you, in order of their appearance:

Fanny Crosby, the blind hymn writer who wrote “Blessed Assurance” and 8,000 other hymns during her lifetime. From her childhood, she thanked God every day for the gift of her blindness:

“Oh, what a happy child I am, although I cannot see! I am resolved that in this world contented I will be.

How many blessings I enjoy that other people don’t! So weep or sigh because I’m blind, I cannot, or I won’t!”

Mela Kamin, a stay-at-home Mom who was afraid her dream of singing was just that—a dream. Until God showed her: “there are no expiration dates on your gifts or your dreams.”

“What got me out on the battlefield? Someone pushed me. Once I started writing songs, everything I knew about myself came back into view. Then doors opened and people appeared.”

Sister Margo, a local almost 70-year-old with a bad back and aching knees who makes inmates cry.

“I tell them, ‘I love you.’”

They reply, “We get an angel face-to-face…Every day, every week, every hour, every second, I’m glad God brought her to my life.”

Blindness, life circumstances, weak knees.

None of the things on the resumes of their life disqualified them from being used by God.

They qualified them.

But what about me? Middle-aged, empty nest, messed up back, afraid-you-won’t-like-me, me? How qualified am I to be used by God?

I’ve been pondering this all week.

Then someone pushed me.

“If you knew Jesus was coming back this week, this month, this year, what completed manuscript would you most want to lay at His feet?”

Yikes.

It pushed me to my knees. It made me pray. It made me weep.

So I ran to find some words from “Papa” to help me:

This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s spirit touches our spirits and confims who we really are. Romans 8:17:15-16 (The Message)

“Grave tending life.”

When I’m too scared to step out and believe God can use me—is that the life I live?

Could God transform me from who I am, into a person able to pen words like:

“Oh, what a happy child I am, although I cannot see!”

I can only say…I hope so.

And I pray so.

I disqualified myself years ago based on distorted perceptions of who I am. And based on other people disqualifying me…at least that’s how I interpreted any inkling of rejection.

What a coward I now see that I am.

Content in my timidity to plant flowers on the graves of my failures and shortcomings. Living life as if it’s already over—unable to dream.

Until now.

Words helped change my life this week…and they helped change me.

I pray God can use my words to help you.

And His Word to change you.

I’ve got a manuscript to live. Prayers to pray, tears to shed, and words to write.

Jesus-changed-my-life words.

If you’ve stopped dreaming, I pray God gives you a little push too. Because just like I needed the words these special women shared, I need what YOU share:

Be generous with the different things God gave you, passing them around so all get in on it: if words, let it be God’s words; if help, let it be God’s hearty help. That way, God’s bright presence will be evident in everything through Jesus, and he’ll get all the credit as the One mighty in everything—encores to the end of time. Oh, yes! 1 Peter 4:10-11 (The Message)